


Surrender

by Whreflections



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Car Possession, Car Sex, M/M, Matchmaking Ghost, Secret Angels Dean/Castiel Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 16:30:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1394470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whreflections/pseuds/Whreflections
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Impala becomes possessed with a spirit, Dean and Castiel are forced to realize that sometimes, there are things you can't avoid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surrender

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the original author's note that went with this one-
> 
> 1\. Dean and Castiel have to pretend to be married.  
> 2\. Bobby and Sam are tired of Dean moping so they matchmake Dean with Castiel because Castiel is all Dean talks about and Sam figured it out long before Dean did.  
> 3\. The Impala is possessed and match makes Dean and Castiel.  
> 4\. Castiel borrows the Impala. I chose to go with a mix of 3 and 4, ^^
> 
> Ok so first of all, I originally meant to write two stories: 1 with Dean and Bobby fixing the two of them up, and one with the Impala. However, real life is a bitch sometimes, and that got derailed. I absolutely adored the Impala idea, though, so I knew that if I had to pick one, that one would be the one to do. 
> 
> I was a little rusty at first getting started on this because it’s been months since I wrote these boys, but then I started feeling like it was coming right back, and I had so much fun. 
> 
> This is set in season 5, sometime near the end, but it’s really a season 5 AU, I supposed, because there wasn’t this kind of time between the episodes it would need to be set between. So…yes. Season 5 AU it is, lol 
> 
> In any case, here’s your fic! I hope you enjoy it! ^^

Dean still maintained that none of it ever would’ve happened if he’d been the one driving the car.   
  
Of course, that was sort of beside the point because it wasn’t like it ended badly. Far from it, actually, and that part, he wouldn’t have wanted to change. But all the same, he liked to make the point. It was one of those stories they never told in order, but rather in jumbled pieces of “Oh, but that wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t-“ and “Hey, remember before that, we-“. Altogether, it made sense, and no matter how out of order they remembered it, it always ended the same way, and Sam and Bobby always laughed and teased when they talked about it.   
  
They’re both a little fuzzy on the details sometimes(or rather, they saw them differently), but the beginning, they can both agree on: Castiel was the one driving the car when the ghost moved in and made herself at home.   
  
‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’   
  
“Ah, c’mon, dammit!” The thunk of the knife hitting the table broke the silence and Castiel looked up, brow furrowed as he watched Dean suck the drop of blood off the end of his thumb.   
  
“Dean?”   
  
His eyes flickered up, hand immediately drawing away from his lips as if he hadn’t exactly remembered Cas was still there. “Nothing. Just…wasn’t exactly payin’ attention, there for a minute.” He shook his hand once more, picked up the knife and whetstone and went right back to work, his eyes on his hands as he spoke. “What are you still doin’ here anyway, huh? Thought you were gonna go with Sam to check out Carol Whatshername at that farm.”   
  
He’d been invited, yes, but he hadn’t exactly been  _needed_ , not for this, and besides, he was sure Dean could use the company. Or the protection at the very least, not that he’d be all that good at that now. With a town overrun with sudden spirit activity, though, none of them should really be alone.   
  
“I don’t suspect they’ll find anything.” More than likely, she was just an unfortunate woman with crop failure rather than the demon  _causing_  the crop failure.   
  
Dean nodded absently, focus still on the knife in his hands. He was doing better, little by little, but sometimes he still had an emptiness to him, the toll taken from too much loss put on a heart that was already tired. He and Sam were gaining ground again, and it was helping, but all the same, Dean had a long way yet to go, and  _he_  had a lot to atone for. Sam hadn’t given up, but he had, and in his own eyes it was almost unforgivable. Dean had trusted him a dozen times, and when it really mattered his own faith in Dean had drained away, slipping through his fingers like sand. So often these days, he didn’t even know what to say, because no matter how close they’d  _been_ , where  _could_  they go from here?   
  
He rubbed his palms together, slow and thoughtful as he leaned his elbows against his knees from where he sat on the edge of the bed. It was stiff, hard as a board and though he’d felt the same from a handful of motel room beds they’d stayed in before it had never mattered to him until he’d needed to sleep. Now, he could appreciate just how desperately they sucked. Sam and Dean, of course, slept like the dead on them. Force of habit.   
  
Dean leaned just a little farther over the table, putting just a little more pressure into striking the knife. Cas could see the muscles in his forearms flexing with the effort, and it was nearly impossible to look away. He’d been finding himself doing that more and more often, lately. It was unnerving, but he honestly couldn’t help it. Before, if he hadn’t already been through so much, that probably would have disturbed him. As it was, it was only Dean he was worried about disturbing, now. He was practically human and God didn’t care, not about his morals or even his species, apparently. But Dean…Dean would care, and so he could never know. It was exactly for that reason that he came to the conclusion that maybe staying and watching over Dean hadn’t been the best idea after all.   
  
“They’ll be hungry, when they get back.” He’d noticed that, pretty quickly. Send one of the two of them out on a mission somewhere, they nearly always came back hungry.   
  
Dean shrugged, absent. “Maybe. Have to finish with these, then I can give Sam a call.” He finished with the knife, skimmed his thumb over the blade to check the edge before his eyes flickered over to Cas, questioning. “Why? You hungry, Cas?”   
  
Probably. It was still something he was adjusting to. Still, it gave him a good out. “I…you can stay here. I’ll get us something.”   
  
Dean tipped back in his chair, reaching over to hook the weapons bag that rested farther back and drag it towards him so he could pull out a sawed off to clean. “Sounds great, but you forgot the part where you can’t go anywhere anymore. Your…’beam me up, Zach’ or what the fuck ever is broken, remember? I mean, even if you tried you could end up-“  
  
“I could drive.”   
  
Dean froze up, and in the back of Castiel’s mind danced a dozen swears in dead languages none of them would recognize. He probably shouldn’t have asked, shouldn’t have pushed. The Impala was  _Dean’s_ and no matter how much he wanted to pretend that Dean had accepted him it wasn’t as if he was Sam, wasn’t like he could-  
  
Dean tossed the keys across the room, and they bounced against his chest to fall to the floor before he could recover enough to catch them. “Don’t turn off the music, and fill her up on the way back.” He hadn’t even managed to take his eyes of the keys yet. “You  _do_  know how to drive, right? Cause if you screw up my car, then-“  
  
“No, no, I…I can drive, Dean.” Was it just all in his head, or did the keys feel ridiculously heavy when he picked them up? Just in his head, it had to be. This was ludicrous, he’d done thousands of more important things, watched over souls in every country in the world but somehow  _this_  felt like an honor. “…I won’t be long.”   
  
‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’   
  
Considering how it felt taking they keys, he’d thought driving the Impala might be hard. Of course the driving itself was easy, a concept so elementary that he could’ve handled it without a problem without his angel reflexes even if he was driving a semi. He did still have his mind, after all…apparently, it was one of the few things they couldn’t take from him at a moment’s notice. Still, she meant the world to Dean, this car, and he’d thought that that would make it hard. He’d already let him down enough, if he hurt the car…well, he wasn’t sure Dean would forgive him. All the same, he’d wanted the chance, even more than he’d wanted to get out of there for awhile, and once he was actually behind the wheel he was shocked at how  _natural_  it felt.   
  
The leather on the wheel was smooth under his hands, and he could feel more than see the places where Dean’s palms so often fit. Dean was in the give in the seat, the knife stashed in the floorboard, the music coming soft through the speakers. Sam had said he played it too quiet these days, teasing, but when Dean had said they didn’t need to attract attention, Sam had gone quiet and it hadn’t been brought up again. There was so much between them, so much history in this car he didn’t know and he got the feeling sometimes that even though he could see so much of Dean in this, even the parts where Dean and his beloved Impala overlapped had changed.   
  
The thoughts were distracting, taking his focus in the way that seemed to happen more and more often when he thought of Dean, and it’s probably why he wasn’t exactly paying attention. The spirit activity, after all, was what had brought them to the town in the first place. A woman swore her grandmother had inhabited her mixer in an old farm house on the edge of town, cake batter coming out no matter what she put in. Another man had been killed by his own tractor, and his neighbors had commented that he’d had it coming after he’d started sleeping with his dead neighbor’s wife. There’d been dozens of others, everything from a curling iron that had killed three people to a bike that had kept a boy from riding into the street, and it was all so bizarre that when they’d heard about the woman with crop failure, they’d grasped onto the largely unfounded hope that she was the source of the insanity.   
  
Whatever the reason, the details of the causation had little to do with the fact that he  _should_  have been paying attention. He was, after all, driving a  _machine_  through a town already known for ghost inhabitations of inanimate objects, but that sort of summed up how things had been, the past few days. He wasn’t sure if it had gotten worse because he was more human or because Dean was acting more like his old self or because they were around each other nearly constantly now, but whatever the reason everything that he’d felt for Dean before had started to converge into a desire that was nearly impossible to shake. He  _wanted_ , and not simply the casual sex he’d seen Dean so ready to offer to nearly everyone else. He wanted  _Dean_ , every bit of him that didn’t already belong irrevocably to Sam, everything he had left to give, and that…well, it’d be an understatement to say it’d be hard to come by. In addition to the walls he’d already had the past few years had taught Dean to make a career out of not letting anyone else in…the ones he had there already did enough damage on their own.   
  
It was while he was thinking about just that that it happened, somewhere around the bridge he crossed over to get to the burger joint Dean had pointed out when they’d driven in. The street lights flickered, then the lights on the dash, and he’d smacked his palm lightly against it like he’d seen Dean do when the fuel gauge had dipped once on the highway.   
  
April Meyers, 17, victim of a car accident while on the way home from visiting her girlfriend in the hospital had just taken up residence in the Impala, and he’d never even known.   
  
‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’   
  
It started out small, at first. They were in the front seat, Sam stretched out asleep in the back. Dean had put in a mix tape, one he said their father had nabbed from Caleb’s truck years and years back. The first song was Firefall, he’d said, and he was just explaining how they were a mostly forgotten band these days when suddenly the speakers crackled with nothing but static. They both reached for the dial, their hands brushing before jerking back. The human body was insanely puzzling, really. He’d touched Dean before, so many times, but  _now_ …now, everything was different. His skin burned, something prickling just underneath only where they’d touched, as if he could still feel the heat of Dean’s fingers.   
  
He shifted back into the seat, putting more space between them. The crackling stopped, Dean reached over to turn the music down to be sure Sam could sleep, and whatever point he’d been making about the band trailed off into nothing. By the time Cas looked over at him again, his eyes were focused on the road.   
  
That one they’d have never really noticed if not for retrospect, but the next was a little more, a little clearer though they still hadn’t realized it at the time. The car had swerved on a lonely back highway, hitting a nail, and though Dean had sworn up and down he hadn’t turned the wheel Sam had still gleefully teased him about reckless endangerment. He’d banished Sam to walk to the gas station they’d passed about a mile back for coffee before calling Bobby to swing back and bring them a spare, and then he’d started in checking her over. They had nothing better to do than wait, he’d argued, and with the apocalypse and everything else he hadn’t had the time to properly look after his baby in ages. He’d asked Cas if he wanted to help, and they’d ended up side by side, looking down into the hood.   
  
He knew next to nothing about cars, but he knew enough to know it wasn’t normal for oil to shoot out quite like that, especially when they hadn’t even unscrewed the cap to  _check_  the oil yet. Still, it had happened, and it was all over his shirt, and he’d shrugged it off to lay it against the side of the road to dry while they waited. Dean’s eyes had skimmed over his bare chest, and Castiel’s mouth had gone dry quicker than he would’ve ever thought possible.   
  
He’d tried to put it out of his mind, and they’d worked side by side, checking antifreeze and anything else Dean might possibly have the supplies on him to fix if necessary. They were forever in each other’s space, and so at first he hadn’t noticed but Dean stayed just a little closer, lingered just a little longer when his chest pressed against Castiel’s back as he leaned over him to rummage through the tool box for the right wrench. When Sam came back he raised his eyebrows but said nothing, though Dean seemed to take it as a jab anyway, muttering darkly before settling in to wait for Bobby. Looking back, that time was probably when they should’ve started to wonder if something was wrong.   
  
The third time, they were alone. Mostly, at least. They were chasing a lead in the Rockies, battling the last spring snow as they traveled up higher into the mountains. He’d taken off his trench coat and suit jacket earlier that day when he’d needed to look more casual as part of their cover, and when the car stalled out on an icy mountain road he almost immediately got out to retrieve them, all too susceptible skin already prickling.   
  
The trunk refused to open, even when Dean swore and yanked on it with everything he had, and they ended up back in the cab, huddled down in the seats as Dean desperately tried to get his cell phone to work. Without a heater the temperature dropped quickly, and it wasn’t long before he was shivering, arms crossed against his chest, back pressed to the door as he curled up in the seat.   
  
He initially jerked at Dean’s hand on his shoulder, relaxing when he kept it there, pulling Cas forward to drape the leather jacket around his shoulders. Their eyes met, and somewhere between his chattering teeth he managed to get out, “No, you need it.”   
  
Dean smirked, casual despite the way Cas could already see goosebumps rising on his arms. “Ah, me? ‘M fine, I’m used to it. With all that angel mojo, your pampered ass has probably never been out in anything under 60 degrees. Me and Sam, we went camping just after a blizzard one time. Dad thought it’d be good for us, see, and-“   
  
He talked, rambling about the past and snow and cabins and a woman named Gina he and Sam had both gone after in Telluride a couple of years later and coffee and fires and the first time Sam had tried to do a salt and burn and caught the cuff of his sweatshirt in the flame because he was only 10 and still had a lot to learn. It was the most and the  _easiest_  Dean had talked in ages, and somehow they ended up on the same side of the car with Dean’s arm around his shoulders to hold the jacket in place, pressed close together without even realizing it.   
  
Somewhere at the back of his mind he hated feeling like this, frail and weak and awkward in this rough hunter’s life, so very disturbingly  _human_ , and just when he was thinking that it should’ve been  _him_ looking after Dean, the car purred to life under them, the heater suddenly blazingly strong.   
  
They slid apart wordlessly, and though Dean cracked a couple of jokes right after, rubbing the dashboard and saying something about how his girl always came through, Cas wasn’t exactly paying attention.   
  
When they reached the cabin they’d been heading toward he got out without realizing he was still wearing Dean’s jacket, and  _that_  time Sam did manage to get off a retort or two before Dean yanked on a pine branch, dumping snow all through his hair. He took it off and gave it back after that, ignoring Dean’s protest that he could’ve kept it if he needed, and he noticed with more than a little curiosity that the trunk now opened without any difficulties.   
  
He knew, then, that something was going on. It had to be, but whatever it was couldn’t be pressing because they had a demon in the cabin and a possible hell hound in the woods and it simply wasn’t the time. Even with his own jacket on once again, his shirt still smelled like Dean, the scent of leather and rock salt and a dozen other unquantifiable things clinging to him. It stirred something hot in his chest, an ache of desire he’d never had to deal with until the past few weeks and he closed his eyes, willing away the heat that tried to settle low in his belly. They were going into battle, and he couldn’t afford to let himself be distracted like this, even if he wanted to.  _Especially_  if he wanted to.   
  
The last time…well, it was more complicated, but it happened like this:   
  
They all knew it had…’been awhile’, for Dean. Since hell he’d been different, and even more so in the past year, but he was coming back to himself again, attacking life with a fraction of the vigor he’d had before and really, Cas should’ve known it was only a matter of time before he started actively picking women up again. He  _had_  known, really, but that didn’t mean he’d been ready to see it. They’d been at a bar, going over information on the demon they were tracking, and when Dean had started paying more attention to the size zero at the next table, Bobby had left with a few choice words about Dean’s intelligence and Sam had settled in with a few more drinks, watching. Cas had expected a smile on his face, honestly, but he kept looking between the two of them with something like worry.   
  
The girl had ended up in Dean’s lap 15 minutes later, and Castiel realized that the way things were now, he had a limit. Some things, he couldn’t bear to actually watch. Dean’s hands were on her waist and he was smiling and it was… _God_ , it hurt. Far more than he’d ever expected, a sharp, sudden, stabbing pain. He left, taking the research with him and muttering something under his breath about heading off to get back to  _work_. Sam reached for his wrist, eager to stop him but he slipped away, ignoring him. In the air outside, it felt like he could breathe just a little bit better.   
  
He’d been out on the road walking toward the house they suspected the demon was basing her operations out of for almost a half hour before Dean called, his voice furious on the other end of the line.   
  
“Where the  _hell_  are you? You just took off, and Sam said-“  
  
“We have a case, Dean, we’re  _here_  because this demon is-“  
  
“I know, Cas! I know that, look, I know, we’re here, following the lead, but we have to take a breather every now and then before we all go nuts and I…where the hell are you?”   
  
Honestly, he didn’t exactly know. Somewhere between the bar and the house, with a telephone pole where someone had stapled a bright yellow ‘Have you seen this cat?’ flyer. “…on the road we came in on. Dean, I understand. You and Sam…this is ‘normal’ for you, and I understand that the chance we have at stopping this is slim, and whatever you have to have-“  
  
“Oh, will you shut up?” It was snappy, exasperated, and he could almost picture Dean’s frustration. Still, he was making an honest point. They were trying. They were doing everything they could, but around the time when he’d realized they were in it alone without God having even the slightest concern he’d started to realize it didn’t really matter what they did. They could keep fighting, but the world was going to go to hell. It was almost an inevitability.   
  
He was just about to reassure Dean again that everything was fine when the glare of headlights over the hill in the road distracted him, his hand coming up to shield his eyes. He should have known by the lights alone, but it wasn’t all the way clear until the car virtually screeched to a stop beside him, the door swinging wide open.   
  
“Get in.” Dean was leaning on one arm against the wheel, his phone already back in his jacket pocket and Cas folded his own shut, slowly. He hadn’t seen Dean this angry in awhile, not since the last time they’d discussed Adam’s whereabouts and he’d told Dean there was very little chance of Adam making it out of this alive.   
  
Cas slid into the seat, reaching out to shut the door only to find that it shut itself, banging against his hand hard enough that it stung. His head jerked up, eyes meeting Dean’s, and Dean nodded, a little grimly.   
  
“Yeah, tell me about it. There’s something wrong with the car.” Even as he said it, the car sprang to life, jolting at a fast clip down the road only to pull off quickly, slipping into park under the cover of an old sign on the side of the road. Dean threw his hands up in the air, gesturing at the wheel. “It’s crazy, I mean, I brought Rachel out here and the doors kept flyin’ open, she screamed and got out and I tried to follow her, and it just…took  _off_ , and Sam called and said he didn’t know where you were cause you weren’t at the room, and I tried to tell him about the car but he couldn’t hear me, absolutely nothing, couldn’t call Bobby but I got you and…oh you’ve  _got_  to be kidding me!”   
  
Rambling like that, it seemed he’d figured it all out. It was making sense to Cas all of a sudden too, the way lights had been flickering on the dash, flashlights unreliable when they turned them on in the car. Cell phone reception had been iffy and the controls had been strangely reluctant for anyone but Dean and all of the odd incidents now seemed to pull together, making a disturbing kind of sense. The car hadn’t been the same, not since-  
  
“Son of a  _bitch_!” Dean slammed his palm against the steering wheel, turning to dive for the door handle only to have it lock before he reached it. He cursed, beat his fist against it but it held solid, locked and shut tight, and he whirled back to face Castiel again. “It was that town, you remember? The one with all the weird ghost possessions and… _dammit_ , I shoulda figured this out! I knew something was goin’ on but…god _dammit_!”   
  
Honestly, it was a little funny. Out there the world was ending, slowly but surely, and what were they dealing with? The fact that they were locked inside a sentient car, one that(now that he thought about it) seemed to only want to push them together. No more, no less. He laughed, low and soft and the look that Dean gave him made it even better, one that seemed to ask whether he’d finally snapped under all the pressure.   
  
“If she wanted to kill us, Dean, she’s had ample opportunity.” No, her agenda was entirely different, and now that he’d realized it what he couldn’t quite understand was  _why_. Some of the others spirits in the town had manifested themselves in helpful ways as well, but  _this_ …it was feeding off his emotions perhaps, latching onto everything he felt for Dean since the moment he’d freed him from hell that had never been expressed, taking the ever growing latent need inside him and using it to fuel not only it’s power but it’s decisions. It wasn’t exactly a common idea, but then, neither was any of this.   
  
Dean made a dismissive noise in the back of his throat, his eyes scanning over the dashboard. “Yeah, well then what does she…” Right then he got it, and Castiel could see it in his eyes. Maybe in the thought that it had kicked the super model out of the car, or in the memory of the locked trunk and the absent heater but some part of it sparked realization. He sucked in a sharp breath, suddenly looking away, and Cas could almost see this too, the way his carefully constructed walls settled in around him. “Look, I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t…I mean, you’re an  _angel_ , or at least…and me, I, after everything I’ve-  
“  
  
“Dean, you’ve done nothing that warrants apologizing to me. I doubted you, I  _left_  you…if…if God-“ And oh, it still hurt to say it. “If my father has stepped out of the picture then it is more important than ever that I take a stand against my brothers, and rather than help you, I was more willing to…” To what, beat him senseless? Nothing sounded good, not here, none of it got the full point across.   
  
Dean, though, was already shaking his head. “No, look, Cas this is…this is different, ok? This is different, and it has…ok, it has  _something_  to do with you, but it’s all me, and I’m screwed up, you know that, and I thought at first it was just because you pulled me out of hell, that I was just…latching onto that or something, and it’d go away but it hasn’t, ok, it…it…geez, are you gonna make me say this? Even  _you_ have to understand what I’m getting at, you know how humans are and-“  
  
He didn’t let himself question. Dean was as uncomfortable as he’d ever seen him, looking anywhere but at Castiel’s eyes and rambling, trying to get it all out, and if he hadn’t been so shocked at the revelation that this wasn’t all in  _his_  head he’d have probably had the presence of mind to put him out of his misery sooner. Still, he managed as soon as he could, darting forward across the distance between them. He’d never done  _this_ , not once, but action was something he understood, and he’d seen Dean do it often enough over the time he’d spent watching him.   
  
He took Dean’s chin in his hand, tipping his head up, and he kissed him hard, all tongue and teeth and desperation. Dean responded almost the instant their lips touched, reaching up to tangle one hand in Castiel’s hair, the other coming to rest against his cheek. He pulled away, still close enough that Cas could feel his breath brush against damp lips.   
  
“Cas, you don’t…you don’t have to do this, for me. I’d never ask that.”   
  
If he hadn’t been too distracted by the flicker of hope in Dean’s eyes, he’d probably have been more annoyed. He wasn’t a blank puppet, not anymore. To tell the whole truth, he never had been. It was why he’d had so much hope pinned on Dean after he freed him, why he’d worked so hard to save him in the first place. Dean was a soul unlike any other, and if he’d been the ‘perfect’ angel he should’ve been, he’d have never seen the beauty in that at all. “If you remember, I’m entirely cut off from heaven, Dean. I no longer ‘have’ to do anything.”   
  
The silence between them stretched, and he could hear everything from the Dean’s rapid breathing to the soft rustling as his hand slid down, wrapping around Castiel’s tie. He fingered it absently, toying with the silk before tightening his grip, tugging lightly. He still knew little about human responses, about how all of ‘this’ actually went and he was startled at how  _good_  even that felt, sharp heat rushing though his veins as he gasped, following through and letting Dean pull him closer.   
  
This kiss was gentler, slow and deliberate and oh so much better. He’d been all urgency but Dean was all skill, sucking on his lip in a way that made Cas moan, all coherent thought leaving him entirely when Dean responded to the sound by moving the hand that had been raking through his hair down to cup the front of his pants. Dean squeezed gently and his body shuddered, hips twitching forward into the teasing touch. Dean pushed him back then, easing him down to the seat with fingers still wrapped around his tie, holding on like a tether as he leaned over him, their bodies pressed together as best they could in the cramped space.   
  
His eyes were blown wide with lust and something softer, but before he’d really gotten a good look Dean’s lips were on his again, and he forgot everything else. As much as he’d never agreed with Anna on anything else, this,  _this_  was absolutely a pleasure worth falling for. Dean tasted heady and strong, like nothing he could have ever described and he knew he’d never be able to get enough, no matter how much he drank the feeling in. Their hands were everywhere, searching, and when Dean’s shirt came off and he pressed his palm against the mark he’d left so long ago there could’ve been no doubt how  _right_ this was. Dean bit down on his neck, groaning with a feral sound that shot through him like quicksilver, and he thought in that moment that he understood why no one else had wanted the job of pulling Dean Winchester from the Pit.   
  
It wasn’t just the journey, and it wasn’t just the separation from home, from the garrison and everything they’d known. It was  _this_ , the bond that had drawn him to this broken soul and that made him feel as if now, for the first time in ages, he was finally complete.   
  
They moved together with natural ease, and though he’d instinctively sought more Dean had stopped him, brushing his hands away and muttering that  _that_  could wait. Later, when they could take their time. This was simple, primal, and it didn’t last half as long as Castiel wished it could’ve.   
  
In the aftermath Dean still lay against his chest, sweat cooling between them as he sucked lightly over the mark he’d already left there on his neck.   
  
When the ignition turned and the car rumbled to life, Kansas pouring from the speakers, neither of them could do anything but laugh. 


End file.
